About

Steem Monsters: A Digital, Role Playing, Trading Card Game!

$88,171

pledged of $50,000 goal

274

backers

Steem Monsters is a thoughtful strategy and resource management game built on blockchain technology. We're bringing back the fun you had playing collectible card games as a kid, but now with the benefit of the internet. Maybe you're just starting, and we couldn't be more excited to have you join this community!

Centralized games

We played Magic and Pokemon and all those card games too. We didn't like when the games went digital we no longer owned cards, nor could we trade them. Blizzard and Wizard owned our stuff. NOT US!

Frankly, all the money we spent was simply gone when we stopped playing.

We also got frustrated by how much luck was involved. It seemed like winning was simply a race to see who got that one special card in the deck first. We wanted something different!

We're putting the fantasy in fantasy sports. Instead of drafting a sports team of quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers, in Steem Monsters you'll draft a team of tanks, casters, healers, and assassins. We'll cap team spending through mana limits so you can't just use all the best cards to win. You'll accumulate cards, level them, equip them with sweet magic items, and then send them off to combat.

Players who thoughtfully build teams will crush opponents even with higher levels and rarer cards. Players on a budget can start with only the Starter Pack ($5) and work their way up through the game play.

Because we're on a blockchain every card has a unique ID. We can do cool things with that! You can level up your cards, equip powerful magic items, level up those items, cast spells to alter the fate of the battle, level up those spells, know the little things like who owned this card before you, and you can trade YOUR cards to whoever you want whenever you want!

Every single card is unique! Not just every type of card. EVERY SINGLE CARD is unique!

You can trace all purchases made. You can see that they were all done fairly. You can see how the unique hash of a block is used to randomly generate what cards are produced, you can see how fighting is resolved fairly, you can see the supply of any card in the game, and you can track every trade at every price. You can see anyone's deck of cards and you can know with perfect accuracy exactly what cards are out there to buy, sell, swap, or fight. Even better, you and others can make 3rd party apps for this so everyone can see what's out there and you don't have to rely on us!

The Story

The Prophecy states "that which was Splintered shall be made whole."

The world was once a whole and complete floating world where all monsters and summoners lived together with one sun and six moons, but nearly a thousand years ago there was a cataclysm and the world Splintered. Each Splinter has since been doing their best to survive and regroup. Some work to make the world whole, some believe it never was whole, and others work to keep it torn apart. Recently, a plague has been affecting monsters and summoners from all the Splinters called "The Burn".

There are 6 Splinters, each with their own sets of summoners, monsters, customs, talents, and drawbacks. There's a backstory to the land itself and we're working on a hundred+ page campaign guide to show everyone, in astonishing detail, what the world looks like in the Splinterlands.

There's music that's been crafted for this game too. When my six-year-old daughter said, "It sounds like adventure!" I knew we'd hit the mark. This helps set the stage for all the stories we tell and have yet to write.

Each and every card in the game will have custom backstories, as well. Learn how Zintar Mortalis became a summoner for the Dark Eternals when he siphoned all life around him to keep his son alive. Feel the pain of the Twisted Jester as he stalks the lands looking for Lord Rotchild who murdered his wife and children and left him for dead. Look at your child's face as they see young Talia send jets of fire from her hands to burn off the gelatinous cube threatening her pregnant mom and big sister. Feel the heat of the fire beetles endlessly carrying the sparkstone.

We're more than a game; we are a collection of rich stories detailing compelling characters in heroic action.

These stories get revealed as you level the cards. Start with some simple details, and then ramp up to the intense moments that made them the Legendary beasts foretold in dreams.

You can watch us animate these pieces too. We'll truly bring them to life on your screen.

All elements are in collaboration with members of the Steem Community. Steem is a blockchain with 60,000 active accounts per day, and we've been running contests for months to have authors submit stories, create music, and build the campaign guide. We've taken the best of the best and been putting together compelling stories; some are funny and light, while others are dark and brooding.

The campaign guide itself had almost 20 teams, usually comprised of 4-5 people, working on 6 splinters. It's given us a diverse set of cultures, races, places, and priorities to explore and find conflict with.

We can't emphasize enough how a good story is a component of what will set this apart. We played WoW and played through Molten Core and Lich KIng, but we didn't just play, we also knew the story of the characters and the world. That's part of the full immersion. You'll find storytelling is built at the core of Steem Monsters, and if you're interested, you might find yourself writing parts of it too!

In the game, you'll have a variety of ways to interact. You'll compete in daily quests, a single player campaign, 1-on-1 PVP, Guild PVP, Boss Fights, and weekly tournaments with a prize pool worth at least $1,000!

Daily Quests- You beat randomly generated teams of monsters in combat and earn daily rewards towards packs and other bonuses.

Single Player Campaign- You start the campaign as a low-level character and travel through the Splinterlands (which has been highly detailed in the campaign guide). As you travel, you'll collect characters, items, and level up. You'll learn about the cause of the Splintering and a role that you might play to help bring about a complete world.

1v1- You can participate in a matchmaking system used to test your skills against an appropriate opponent. You'll move up in rank and we'll reward high ranking players with packs and other benefits.

Grand Tournament- Every week we'll sponsor a Grand Tournament. Our plan is to host a $1000 minimum prize pool. We anticipate that a significant portion of incoming funds from card pack sales and 100% of incoming sales from trading fees will be used to increase prize pools for tournaments. The payouts are paid in Steem/SBD, which are the currencies used on the Steem blockchain. So, the dollar amount is set in USD and paid in crypto.

Guild Tournaments- In addition to 1v1 fighting we'll implement a way for guilds to fight each other. Join a guild, and as the guild gains experience they'll get additional benefits to help them fight, craft new items, earn resources, and gain glory and riches.

Boss Fights- The ultimate combat experience is the team Boss Fight. Work with your guildmates to draft a team capable of bringing down the Heroic Boss.

Arena Rotations - We have six Splinters representing different types of energy and elements around the world. Each Splinter has one or more arenas where summoners train. Each Arena has its own special flavor. Some will provide hometeam buffs and certain team debuffs. Some will favor large monsters and others small. Some will come with their own set of challenges. As we get more sophisticated in our fighting we'll create a schedule for matches in different Splinters and we'll publish how that effects fights.

Combat at this stage is computer generated. The strategy is in the team building and resource management. This isn't a turn by turn card playing game (at least in this Kickstarter round). You'll draft your team and send that drafted team to fight against other players individually or be placed in tournaments. It's not artificial intelligence. It follows the rules you and your opponents set in place.

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Combat Ability Guides!

Here are the list of stats and abilities to choose from. There's even more options when we release spells and items!

You'll notice that cards have two types of foils: regular (which matches the color of the Splinter it's from) and gold. There will be tournaments for each type of card. There will be tournaments that are exclusively available to gold foil cards. Not only are these cards rarer, but they also will narrow the competition of players to make for a higher chance of winning the tournament prize.

This isn't hypothetical. The alpha of the game has been out for 2 months. In that time we've sold ~2,000 starter packs and 202,000 booster packs. We're only selling 98,000 more on the site and then they are never available for sale again. Players are already leveling their cards and/or trading them on a decentralized exchange we built. Literally, thousands of transactions for tens of thousands of dollars have already gone through! Come try it!

You'll see our dex is highly functional and in seconds you can list or purchase cards for sale. Here's a snap shot from 9/7/18 on how the rarest of the cards are priced. top left number is lowest price, top right number is highest price, and the number in the red flag is how many are currently listed on the market.

We're trying to take crypto mainstream, and we think that card games are a great way to do it. Come for the card game, and stay for the life-changing crypto experience. We're built on the Steem Blockchain. You can often find it doing more transactions than all other blockchains combined. We have 60,000 unique accounts transacting every day on the block, and they form the bedrock of our game community. As it happens, both Yabapmatt and Aggroed are elected officials on the Steem blockchain with a vested interest in acting with passion and integrity.

In order for us to truly progress from functional alpha to fighting beta, we need more development funds. That's where you come in! We're ready to provide you with some awesome opportunities to own unique cards and get a pretty sweet deal on extremely rare cards in exchange for money we need to help push this game to the next level. We want fighting, mining, equipment, spells, virtual spaces to hang out, and our own cartoon. We need YOU to help us get there!

Like many of these kinds of games, different cards have different powers and different rarities. You should consider three things when judging how powerful a card is: mana cost, rarity, level. In order to make sure it plays well together you're going to want to know its stats: attack power, magic attack, armor, health, and speed. You'll also want to know which abilities your cards have. Good combinations will win fights. Bad combinations won't get you very far.

One other factor to consider is the foil on the card. There are two types of foil: regular and gold. There will be tournaments that are gold only and they will have their own prize pools.

A card has a 26% chance of being RARE.

A card has a 5-6% chance of being EPIC.

A card has a 1% chance of being LEGENDARY.

Any of those cards have a 1-2% chance of being a GOLD FOIL CARD.

All pledge levels include Booster Packs (these cost $2 on the site and contain five cards with a minimum of at least one rare card), and exclusive Kickstarter rewards. As you move up in cost you'll be getting more Booster Packs and some Kickstarter exclusive cards. Included in the higher tiers are not only Kickstarter exclusive common foil cards, but Kickstarter exclusive gold foil cards.

Extra cards

You can purchase extra versions of the exclusive crowdfunding cards cards. Simply increase your pledge before the end of the Kickstarter campaign by the amount you'd like to spend on the additional cards. We'll use a form after this ends to determine what you've purchased. After Oct1 these cards will never be available again.

You can purchase a set of the 4 Kickstarter EXCLUSIVE REGULAR FOIL CARDS:

Each common Dragon Whelpling Runt costs $1

Each rare Neb-Seni costs $5

Each Royal Dragon Archer Costs $10

Each Shin Lo Dragon costs $50

Set costs $60

Extra Gold Foils

You're also welcome to purchase extra GOLD FOIL CARDS:

Each gold foil common Dragon Whelpling Runt costs $5

Each gold foil rare Neb-Seni (summoner) costs $40

Each gold foil epic Royal Dragon Archer Costs $100

Each gold foil legendary Shin Lo Dragon costs $600

Set costs $700

Beta Boosters

Beta Booster packs are available for sale, as well, at $2 per pack. If you purchase 100 or more packs in a single transaction, you will receive an additional 10% bonus packs free, or if you purchase 500 packs you get 15% extra! If you'd like to purchase additional boosters please just adjust your pledge to include the extra number you'd like to receive.

Long-Term Vision

There comes a time when a critical mass is built and the game takes on a life of its own. Once the cards are publicly available we won't be the only ones developing things for this project. Someone could build a first-person role-playing fighting game with our cards. Someone could make a clash of clans variant with the monsters you own representing the monsters you can clash with. People can make things knowing the state of the game that's out there.

It's fully decentralized and all information is publicly available on the Steem blockchain. We don't know where this is going to go, but we're going to help third-party developers create cool things to augment the game experience and keep people excitedly interacting on the Steem platform. This is very much the start of seeing where blockchain games can go!

Joining the Community

Risks and challenges

The first hurdle, we're learning, is just how much work a Kickstarter campaign is. As it turns out there are 3 people on the team who have run one before. Thank goodness! That's going to make this a team effort rather than a one-man show, and that should take some of the incredible stress off of any one person.

The second major challenge is order fulfillment. We're purposefully not shipping a physical product with this. That adds so much difficulty and cost to the project, and it usually eats into the working capital on projects. On this project everything is digital and we can code scripts to ship off account creation, create card packs, plan air drops, and other pieces. That cuts fulfillment from weeks to days or a week.

Virality is one of the biggest challenges. How do you get lots of people on board? We have a pretty active account in our home blockchain of Steem, and have an active base of roughly 2,000 people already in the game. That's a good start. We're also planning on having lots of daily social media interaction rewards available throughout the actual Kickstarter.

Another neat aspect of the blockchain is that when you all own a digital asset collectively then there becomes a community pull to help grow it. If you want these cards to gain value then the best thing you can do is buy some cards, build your deck, and then tell your friends they should come along too! As more folks continue to buy into the game it helps the overall economy and strengthens the value of the cards.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $2,900 or more
About $2,900

BOSS FIGHT BOSS!

YOU become a HEROIC BOSS MONSTER and all the teams have to BOSS FIGHT YOU!!! You'll build the backstory for your character and help us design the fight itself.

You'll get 500 More packs (a $1,000 value).

You'll join an exclusive members-only section of the public Discord group called "Monster Mavericks" where you can directly influence the in-game art and design, and converse with the creators directly.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $2,900 or more
About $2,900

Beta Boss Fight Boss

YOU become a HEROIC BOSS MONSTER and all the teams have to BOSS FIGHT YOU!!! You'll build the backstory for your character and help us design the fight itself.

You'll get 500 More Beta packs (a $1,000 value).

You'll join an exclusive members-only section of the public Discord group called "Monster Mavericks" where you can directly influence the in-game art and design, and converse with the creators directly.